Urban Land Use and Water Quality

Wherever you live, there’s a creek or stream near you

Water Resources

Water Resources

Water information is fundamental to national and local economic well-being, protection of life and property, and effective management of the Nation’s water resources. The USGS works with partners to monitor, assess, conduct targeted research, and deliver information on a wide range of water resources and conditions including streamflow, groundwater, water quality, and water use and availability.

USGS Water Data for the Nation

Surface-water, groundwater, water-quality, and water-use data collected at approximately 1.9 million sites across all 50 states.

Do you need consistent and reliable data for nutrient concentrations released by point-source dischargers? The USGS has developed a new approach for developing typical pollutant concentrations (TPCs) in the absence of measured total nitrogen (TN) or total phosphorus (TP) concentration data and a new tool, the Point-Source Load Estimation Tool (...

Publications

The U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) and the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) initiated a cooperative study through the Southern Nevada Public Land Management Act (Bureau of Land Management, 1998) to install six wells in the carbonate-rock and basin-fill aquifers of Clark County, Nevada, in areas of sparse groundwater data. This map uses water levels...

Dams disrupt the flow of water and sediment and thus have the potential to affect the downstream geomorphic characteristics of a river. Though there are some well‐known and common geomorphic responses to dams, such as bed armouring, the response downstream from any particular dam is dependent on local conditions. Herein, we investigate the...

Turbidity currents are generated when denser river water plunges and flows along the bottom of a lake, reservoir, or ocean. The plunging and downstream movement are driven by density differences due to temperature and/or suspended sediment, and currents have been observed to move slowly over long distances. This study presents observations of...